Thursday, 11 July 2013

Homemade Pasta

Being one of the most popular and versatile staple foods around, the ability to make your own pasta is a useful, if time-consuming skill to possess. Although it undoubtedly requires patience, and practice most definitely makes perfect , the actual process of making pasta is not especially difficult and only uses four ingredients, so if you have some time, patience and a pasta-roller (makes life a lot easier than rolling by hand - I used an Imperia pasta machine which came from Amazon) , try making some from scratch - it's very satisfying! The difference between homemade pasta and the dried shop-bought stuff is marked in both taste and texture, with DIY pasta being incredibly light and fresh-tasting, cooking in just 2-3 minutes. I used mine in a deliciously creamy prawn tagliatelle dish, another great recipe from Katie Quinn Davies' book I mentioned in a previous post.

To serve 4-6 people you will need…

280g "00" Pasta Flour

1 tsp salt

3 eggs

25ml olive oil

You will need to…

- Weigh flour and salt onto a clean table top, making a well in the middle.

- Drop in the eggs and oil and mix with the flour gradually, drawing in the edges of the well by hand.

- Knead into a soft smooth dough, adding a little water if necessary. Cut into four equal sized balls, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

- If using a pasta machine, flatten out a ball and run it through the machine on the thickest setting ten times, folding into three after each roll. After this, reduce the machine setting by one notch after each roll until your pasta is as thin as desired (I used the thinnest setting).

- If using a rolling pin, roll the equivalent of ten times, folding after each roll as you would with a machine, and then roll to the desired thickness.

- Cut pasta, and allow to dry. If making tagliatelle, allow the cut pasta to dry for a few minutes, then roll strands around a rolling pin to make 'nests' and allow to dry fully on a board - this will take a couple of hours minimum.

- When ready to cook, simply place in boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes until al dente.

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